Sixty years ago, Azusa Pacific University was still Pacific Bible College. The school still called the hillside campus its home, and it certainly could not accommodate 10,700 undergraduate and graduate students. There was no athletic department. That was, until, Dr. Cliff Hamlow was hired as the university’s first athletic director in 1954.
Under the direction of then-university President Cornelius Haggard, Hamlow began to construct an athletic department from the ground up. It began with five programs: basketball, volleyball, softball, baseball and six-man football.
“I felt that God was calling me into the youth pastorate or education, so I saw it as ministering to young men and women, who through athletics, would develop their life and their lifestyle,” Hamlow said.
Hamlow expanded those five sports so the department included 13 intercollegiate teams. Under his guidance, the university became a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics in 1965. Additionally, the program established an affiliation with the National Christian College Athletics Association.
As the department continued to grow, the mission remained the same. For Hamlow, who remained at the helm of athletics through 1992, the mission was to invest in the student athletes as people, with focus first placed on spiritual and academic growth, then athletic development.
That goal was achieved through the hiring process of coaches. According to Hamlow, it wasn’t whether they were going to win or not, it was what they were going to do with their athletes.
“You looked at their heart, you looked at their ability to work with people and their knowledge of the sport, and probably in that order,” Hamlow said. “If you’re there only for the game, there’s millions of people. If you’re there to teach the game in a Christ-centered way, there aren’t very many.”
Among coaches brought into the department under Hamlow was former football head coach Jim Milhon (’78-’94). When Milhon first arrived at APU in 1975 as an assistant coach, only 38 names were listed on the roster.
“No one ever said to me, ‘Jim, you have to win.’ That wasn’t a part of it,” Milhon said. “But certainly, if we wanted to play, we wanted to be competitive.”
Milhon describes setting out to find a certain kind of athlete: one whom professors would enjoy having in class and a player who wouldn’t mind attending chapel and contributing to the community.
“I didn’t want to recruit players who thought the only reason they came to Azusa was only to play football and school was just incidental of that,” Milhon said.
As he began to build the program, the team began to find success. In 11 of his 17 years at the helm the squad posted a winning record. He coached players who continued on professionally, including former NFL running back Christian Okoye.
“God honored some of the things this school stands for and does,” Milhon said. “I didn’t recruit Christian Okoye, circumstances brought him here.”
Other Hamlow hires included all three of his successors: Terry Franson (’93-’95), Bill Odell (’96-’11) and current Athletic Director Gary Pine.
Franson served as the men’s track and field coach for 15 years before taking over the role as athletic director. In that time, he led his team to 11 NAIA championships. Upon his acceptance of the director of athletics position, the baton was passed to current head coach Kevin Reid, who continued to lead the program to national success with 12 NAIA championship titles, more than any other track and field coach in the association’s history.
Reid was a dual-sport athlete at Azusa Pacific before graduating and immediately working alongside Franson as an assistant coach. The 13-time NAIA Coach of the Year shares a perspective on his athletes concurrent with the vision that has seemingly guided the department since its founding in 1954.
“Their personal process is just as important with where they are and where they’re going as today’s workout and tomorrow’s and next week’s and next month’s and the big meets,” Reid said. “That personal growth really drives that athletic growth.”
In 1996, Franson accepted his current position of vice president of student life, handing the reins of the department over to Odell. Under the direction of the university’s former men’s basketball coach, Azusa Pacific brought home 22 NAIA championship titles and six consecutive NAIA Director’s Cups.
Pine accepted the position of athletic director in 2011, the first year of the university’s three-year NCAA Division II membership process. In that year he oversaw the school’s acquisition of its eighth Director’s Cup before the programs moved to Division II play in the 2012 season.
Pine, also an APU alumnus (’84), served as the university’s first full-time sports information director directly following graduation. After a four-year hiatus during which he served as an SID at USC and worked in the Big West Conference’s office (’89-’93), Pine returned to Azusa Pacific as the sports information director.
“I’ll be honest with you, the first six weeks I said: ‘I made a mistake. This is the worst decision I ever made.’ My office burned down. I walked back into the same desk, the same old chair, the same dirty files,” Pine said. “I couldn’t believe I was back at Azusa Pacific.”
That, however, soon changed for Pine as he watched the growth of the department unfold right before him.
Pine recalled some of the defining moments in APU athletics: football beating Cal Lutheran in the fall of ’83 for the first time in school history; the installation of Cougar Stadium in ’86; giving track and field its first real track to train on; Odell’s success with men’s basketball, which began to consistently defeat schools like Biola and Westmont in the mid to late-’90s, and were, as Pine describes, the program’s “measuring sticks”; track and field’s continuing to have success at the national level; football’s winning its first national title in ’98; and the construction of the Felix Event Center.
“You felt the whole pride of the university really begin to change,” Pine said. “We looked at ourselves differently.”
The university, now in its first year as a full-fledged NCAA Division II member, has already claimed Division II conference titles in women’s soccer, women’s cross country and football.
“I assumed it would have growth,” Hamlow said. “Could I envision having APU having nearly 11,000 students and the program we do now, in ’54? No.”
The department continues to expand, with programs such as acrobatics and tumbling and women’s water polo.
“I see the future out in front of us. Let’s grow,” Pine said. “Let’s go see if we can win in Division II. I think we can. At the same pace that we did in the NAIA? I want to say I hope not. I want the competition to be there, but at the end of the day too, I want it to allow us to sit at the table of the NCAA.”
Pine describes sport as having a hold on our culture, recognizing the opportunity the university has to speak from a platform that comes with being a competitive program.
“I want our coaches to sit at the table of discussion,” Pine said. “I want us dialoguing. I want us representing Christ in an honoring, loving, truthful manner.”
*Updated: “Pine describes sport as having a hold on APU culture” changed to “our culture” as in American culture